I attended a presentation a few weeks ago hosted by a Sales and Trading Analyst from Barclays Capital, and this gentlemen put things in a very interesting, yet scary prospective.

He gave a Powerpoint presentation, which started with the first slide being the ad for the recent Movie Terminator Salvation.  Everyone in the in the audience was very confused, but then the Analyst made a very strong and relevant connection to this movie. He mentioned how today, machines are responsible for 70% of trades executed, daily, and that traders these days need to be able to compete with these computers in order to be successful in financial markets. In other words, they need to fight the machines, just like in Terminator Salvation.

But how can a human being compete with a machine that can execute trades in less than a second and profit from it? Then, I thought of The Filter Bubble, in which Pariser mentions a man by the name of Peter Thiel. Thiel is known for founding PayPal advising, and for his unorthodox believes. But there is one thing that Thiel believes that I am starting to believe as well, and that is the idea of man and machine eventually melding. I know this sounds crazy, but the Sales and Trade analyst lead me to believe so.

In today’s world, the social media concept is ruling not only the internet, but people’s life’s all together. Everyone is jumping on these social media websites, and Yahoo wanted a foot in the action as well. The sit sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion!

As we learned in class, Facebook and personal identities on the web are becoming almost just as important as our physical repuatations. Facebook purchased instagram to connect both social media sites together. Is it probable that Yahoo, a search engine, purchased this social media site in order to gather more information about it’s users to better personalize ads and to help narrow down searches?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/technology/social-media-is-moving-into-creativity-like-tumblr.html?ref=technology

In chapter 8 of the Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser provides solutions to resolve the horrible information diet of today’s society. He provides solutions as to what the government should do, in which he says that the governments should be obligated to protect the state that they govern be regulating information society. Well, it might be safe to say that we are taking a step towards this direction.

I recently read an article stating that the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus has sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page adressing the potential privacy issues arising from the incredibly innovative Google Glass product. This also relates to our class, as we have discussed Google glass and how it can be extremely intrusive with repsect to privacy, and this article addresses many of our same concerns.

http://my.firedoglake.com/consumerwatchdog/2013/05/17/bipartisan-privacy-caucus-asks-important-privacy-questions-about-google-glass/

I read through the blog straight through. I then went back and made various changes such as on the

Current Amenities Page: added a few amenities and edited one or two.

What Plaza’s Are Page: edited content, added a picture, made comparison to another Plaza’s in NYC.

History Page: added a current update

Cover Page: edited format, added wikipedia style contents box

My family owns a small corner store located in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. Our store has been servicing our community for the past 40 years, and my family has experienced many different trends within those years. There was a time when we covered an entire wall with an inventory of magazines, ranging from gossip, to cars, to video games, etc.

We were also known in our community for selling a wide variety of newspapers. Our top sellers were the Daily News, New York times, and, New York Post. On a regular week, my store would sell 1000 copies of each of these papers (100 copies for Monday through Friday, and 400 copies on Sundays). I was in my early teens when my store sold these papers at these quantities, however, we noticing a very interesting trend since then. As the years went by, we noticed that there was a gradual decline in the demand for our magazines and newspapers from our customers. And in recent years, we noticed a significant decline. One day, out of curiosity, I asked one of my customers why he stopped buying newspapers from my store. He responded by saying “I get it on my iPad now.” Then, it all made sense. Why would someone want to purchase a hard copy of a newspaper or magazine when they can easily get a subscription on their tablet/computer/laptop?

This trend inspired me to create a Facebook page for my family’s store, which has been featured in a couple of newspaper articles. I have attached the link below.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20111223/washington-heights-inwood/inwood-bodega-steps-into-future-on-facebook

I organized all the articles and pictures into separate folders for easier navigation and editing. I then edited the introduction page by centering everything and moving the facebook like image to the bottom of the page. I also differentiated the titles and sections on the stakeholders page by making the titles bold and increasing the font size and separating the sections with horizontal lines for aesthetic purposes.

One thing I learned from this course was the filter bubble. Not only did I learn from the book, but I actually learned that we are being pushed into a bubble created by what Google and other search engines define us to be. I never knew that the internet judges us by our previous searches and personalizes our future searches by what they think we may want to see.

I also learned about databases. I never knew that there could be so many resources of research in the school library’s website. I always thought that there was always a book for everything, but now I know that I can do my future research online and also use scholarly journals subscribed from the school.

Another important thing I learned about what how technology is really growing in front of our eyes without us even realizing. I knew that we have evolved through computers throughout the years but this class put into perspective on how much smart phones, tablets, and soon to be Google Glass are developing before our eyes.

One thing I wish we would have learned was maybe a little more about different kinds of information and how it affects society. We learned about obtaining information and how society is reacting to new technology but maybe more discussions on to what exactly society was like before the new technology and how it affects people over the world besides only Japan. It would be interesting to discover how third world countries are trying to adapt with technology or to see if hey have any technology at all

One of the things that I learned in this class is how to use the school’s database systems to conduct research. Prior to taking this class, I always though the most efficient way to acquire information was to “Google” any given topic and this would yield a number of searches that I can choose from. Now I know that, by using certain databases provided by the school, and by using key words in my searches, I can find the most appropriate sources that best satisfy my searches. This brings me to my next big take-away from this class, which is how to properly conduct research.

I never realized that there was a “right way” to conducting research before taking this class. I can recall many situations in which I would just type a full question in the Google/Bing/yahoo search box, and just base my searches off from that. Now that I know the proper way to conduct research, it is embarrassing to think that this was my research method for a while. This class has taught me how to use key words in my search in order to yield the best results possible. I am confident that my newly acquired knowledge of how to conduct research will not only serve me well throughout the remainder of my time as an undergraduate student, but it will also serve me well in my respective profession.

My last, big take-away from this course was the whole concept of the “filter bubble” suggested by Eli Pariser in his book. My recent comprehension of the information diet has led me to question my perspective of the world as I currently see it. I now know that I must be very cautious with what I chose to search via the internet. I also learned that it is very important to have an open mind and search things that that I wouldn’t normally search, because that would result in me popping my own personal filter bubble.

One thing that I wish we could have alluded to further within the duration of this course was how to secure our privacy better and reduce the exposure of all pertinent information to the web. I feel that it would have been very useful to learn how to many protect ourselves from the algorithms that internet companies implement in efforts to acquire our information. This especially would be useful for individuals whom aren’t internet savvy, such as myself.

I’m a finance major, so to me, the right way to research is very important. I am graduating this spring and looking back, I feel like I lost count of how many times I had to obtain and analyze data about different companies. I took this class to learn some new techniques to efficiently find information and I wish I took it earlier in my college career.

These past four years, I think I used databases for my finance projects maybe twice at most. I had no idea how to conduct a proper database search to get the exact set of results and such a wide range of databases on our library website intimidated me to the point where I settled down for just “googling” terms. For the very last presentation at Baruch in BPL, I used several databases to find marketing information as well as ratios and it actually took me a much smaller amount of time than searching through regular browsers. Not to mention that Yahoo Finance, for example, probably provides a less accurate and a less detailed set of information than Hoovers.

Besides learning how to use databases, I gained a new perspective on how technology affects our lives. Phones and cameras and social networking have become such a normal part of our lives that we no longer question our necessity for new gadgets. Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture was interesting because our personalities, our behavior and even our social circles are shaped by the way we use technology and how often we use it. The Filter Bubble was a very amusing book because I never previously questioned the results on my search engines, what I saw is what I got. The book made me want to conduct several searches every time I need to find something to gain a more diverse set of data and then definitely clear my cookies.

Throughout the semester, I learned many valuable lessons which I can use for my future classes.

The first thing that I learned was how to use databases. To be honest, whenever I had to write research papers, I never used school databases even though my professors recommended doing so because I didn’t know what to do and I felt that it would be more difficult and time-consuming than simply going to Google.  So when I prepared my papers for my previous classes, especially for business and accounting, I had to jump over all different financial websites trying to look for financial ratios and market analysis. Therefore, I was really glad when we observed Thomson One because I was able to find reliable financial information easier and faster. In addition, I learned valuable techniques when searching databases. This was the first time that I learned about how to use “and”, “or”, parenthesis, asterisks, quotation marks and other useful symbols to filter my search results. Also, a thesaurus was very useful. For example, it was quite surprising “e-mail”, a suggested term by a thesaurus generated different search results when I used “email”. I think that I’m well prepared for research projects for further accounting classes and a BPL class. The database techniques which I learned definitely will be a valuable asset for my future classes and career.

The second thing that I learned was how to create and edit wiki. Not only I learned how to gather information for wiki, I also learned about teamwork. It was really great that everyone in our class was able to easily share, edit, and construct personal ideas. I can use wiki for any group works for my future classes. With Wiki, group members will be more engaged to entire projects because everyone will take a part in others’ works while working on their own. It is not like “I’ve done my part, and that’s it”. Also, editing is traceable and it’s really clear to see “who did what”. So I’m expecting that Wiki can minimize free-rider problems.

The third thing that I learned was how to create mind maps. My experience in past English classes would have been a lot better if I had used mind maps for all my readings.  Even though I was told that I should’ve created something like mind maps or spider webs before writing essays, I never had a chance to do so because I underestimated the power of mind maps. This is the first class that I’ve had actual experiences with mind maps and I realized it could be very useful for many other subjects, addition to English. For example, when I took political science classes, I had a hard time studying because there were so many materials to read, memorize and understand.  It would have been a lot easier if I created mind maps and organized important concepts with related chronological historical events and my additional thoughts. Also, a mind map will help me when I take a BPL class next semester because I can easily make good power points slides and give a presentation to my peers with clearer and more structured explanations using mind maps.  I think mind maps will help me when reading any other text books, analyzing information efficiently, preparing for tests and writing constructive essays for my future classes.

The one thing that I had wished to be covered in our class was how to d o low-tech research.  We learned that how our digital generation has become experts on high-tech research, but we are lacking abilities in interpreting search results into meaningful output reports. We tend to do rely only on high-tech research generating instant search results. And a lot of employers were complaining about how we don’t possess enough research skills ready for workplace. Therefore, since I am also one of the high-tech researchers, I was hoping to learn more techniques and methods of low-tech research. For example, it would’ve helped me a lot if we covered interview techniques.

After I looked over everything I learned from the class, I can’t stop thinking that I should have taken this class when I was a freshman or sophomore. If I had taken the class earlier, it would have definitely helped me when I struggled with school work in a variety of subjects. I learned many valuable things that I can use for courses in Baruch, and also for my future careers and personal life.

Question 2: What practical steps have you taken or are you thinking of taking to make sure that you don’t find yourself trapped in a filter bubble or in a situation where you are giving up more personal information on the web than you’d like?

Prior to this class, my general idea of the internet was similar to the general idea of a machine or computer, you give it a command and it executes in a programmed fashion, uniformly for everyone and everywhere the same exact way. Extensively learning in this class how websites, programs, and applications can create personalized profiles of each user, I’m sure it made everyone in the class aware of the dangers of being trapped in a filter bubble. I no longer follow my “mouse like” trends on the internet as I used to. I try to use various search engines, read up on various topics (sometimes outside of my interest area) and gather information from contrasting points of view. Learning of how “our info can travel to places we’ve never been” was definitely one of the most alarming topics. I still hope that our private info is save with the largest tech giants such as Google or Facebook, but as for subscriptions, sign ups, surveys or anything that asks me for a list of private info, I am always thinking twice if its worth the risk. These days the internet is the window used to look up anyones reputation, and it’s very easy to create a bad one either intentionally or by mistake, such as being wrongly tagged as a cancer patient or even a criminal suspect. But as for the goal of protecting our online reputations we must be very careful of what we share, who we share it with and how that infomation is searchable or displayed.

What would I do to stay out of the filter bubble?

Well I would love to say never use the internet again but that isn’t really plausible. I guess i would probably just use broader search terms and maybe even search terms I wouldn’t want to read in the first place. I would probably talk to more people who have different views in order to understand a holistic view on issues. Also, not send any personal information not even for surveys. Hopefully google wont catch my every move, and keep me out of their bubbles! Except Amazon, Amazon can reccomend stuff I like their book recommendations

When I first signed up for this course I was not sure what to expect. To be honest I needed an extra class and thought what could we possibly do learning about how information is processed and or displayed. I mean the Internet is the Internet right? I was quite wrong and realized afterwards that I knew very little about what the Internet really was. I was not expecting to learn about how technology has dramatically transformed in recent years. I have always had the newest devices and pieces of technology but never have I been the most technologically sound individual in my social circle. I can proudly say that as a result of this course I am no longer ignorant, I am still not the most knowledgeable but I learned a great deal that I would consider significant.

The book The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser was a great basis in which to form a course around. It took about as unbiased of an opinion about the intricacies around the Internet today. It is as up to date as one could ask for and really opened my eyes to how little I took into account the significance of my daily actions. As I mentioned I have always been on the forefront, as a consumer, for all things technological. I have always just assumed that the Internet was this extremely secure medium that can only be accessed by some kind of elite hacker and that there was no reason they would waste their time with myself. The Filter Bubble really opened my eyes and changed my perspectives about the web. The websites I had once thought to be protecting me from Internet hackers are actually the ones that I should be afraid of. I had never even fathomed that my personal information could become the profitable property of a website/ company.

I enjoyed that the topics we covered were not just theories but practical information that applies to our everyday lives. The Filter Bubble as I mentioned was not biased, at least in my opinion. Eli Pariser discussed the benefits of our present day technological resources but also mentioned the disadvantages and the possible threats that can result from it. I have never been the most avid reader of current events but I would absolutely say that I keep up to date and am far from ignorant. What I found fascinating is that I when I thought I read a variety of different perspectives on any particular issue as not to have a biased interpretation. It was the issues themselves that were a product of my ‘Filter Bubble’. I have used Google regularly for years but only now know how to manipulate it. Also I know how it does and has been manipulating me.

I found our work on the search engines to be extremely valuable. I have never properly learned how to utilize the resources on the Internet. I use the Internet, primarily Google, to conduct almost all of my research in my other courses here at Baruch but have always found myself aggravated with the difficulty I had in finding valuable information relevant to my topic. I found the database walkthroughs that we did to be very insightful. I wish we had done a bit more with them. Maybe another lesson or homework assignment in which, we would be required to use and manipulate the databases would have been helpful for me to learn even more. I am currently in an argument and debate course and our final project was to write a research paper on a hypothetical legal case. When I read the syllabus for the class in the beginning of the semester I became worried about having to complete the assignment. I was able to utilize the search techniques such as where and how to use quotation marks in a search. Also I was not familiar with the databases themselves. In my head they were too sophisticated for me to begin to use and I learned in fact they are just as simple, if not simpler than a Google search.

One thing that Eli Pariser did not go into such great depth about was the solutions currently available to protect us on the Internet. There does not seem to be a great deal of them out there at this time. However, we did mention in class that some websites such as Google are beginning to become more and more transparent. I wish we had learned a bit more about how to make them more transparent. Also how, if possible, we can begin to detect or what signs we should look for when it comes to untrustworthy places on the Internet.

Overall I learned a great deal from this course. I enjoyed the relevance of The Filter Bubble. The videos we watched were very practical and correlated well with the topics from The Filter Bubble. I especially liked the recent video that discussed the cognitive abilities of mine and younger generations and that it confirmed my personal theory about intelligence. I know that I am a product of my generation, I just hope that it is not too late for me to un-personalize my world and see things for what they really are.

After taking this class I have become much more mindful of the information I consume and make available. I’ve begun to question the relevance of the things I see; such as who wrote the piece, when it was made, and even the publisher. I have also broadened the types of websites I visit on a day to day basis as to not pigeonhole my interests.

I’ve always thought of myself as very cautious when it came to internet use and information sharing, but this course has made me realize that I may have as much information out there as anyone else. I’ve become weary of filling out surveys that I once thought were for demographic research studies and not just information mining for marketing purposes. I’ve also stopped signing up for random websites that may use that information in a distasteful way. I’m thinking about decentralizing all my information and internet use away from Google’s vast network of resources but that may be harder than it seems.

In this class, we learned many things that can be applied to our lives.   We learned how to have a better personal experience on the web by popping our “Filter Bubble”.  We learned about the amazing benefits and bizarre drawbacks that our society experiences as we become more reliant on digital technology for information.  However, the most important things we learned can be applied to courses here at Baruch.  Even though I am graduating, the things we learned in this class I could apply to the courses I took in the past as well as what I will do in the future

As some others have written about, learning about the various databases as well as how to search within them was a huge part of the course.  Had I known about Thompson One, my research papers throughout my time here could have contained much more in depth information.  More importantly, I think learning how to search within a database or search engine was one of the best parts of the semester.  I think many students jump right into random searches when performing research.  However, it is crucial to first consider if you’re asking the right questions.  Also, it is important to consider every word and phrase that pertains to the topic at hand.  These techniques allow for students to perform actual research, rather than rely on slightly relevant Google search results.  Google is part of the second thing we learned this semester as well.

Before this class, I had a vague idea that companies such as Google and Facebook were collecting information about us, but I had no idea of the extent.  I used to be shocked when I went to a website and saw an advertisement for something I had been previously shopping for on Amazon.  Now, this seems like a simple and comical example of how the websites we use daily use our personal information.  Because of the course and the Filter Bubble, we now know that the web companies we use the most use our information to generate revenues.  This is relevant to being a business student at Baruch, not only because of how it affects us personally, but it shows how American industry is now based on information.  No longer is our economy dominated by manufacturing or agriculture, it is centered on who can collect the best information, and who can use it the best.

One way we can collect and utilize information online is through a Wiki.  Learning the inner workings of a Wiki, and how to construct and manipulate one is the third important thing we learned in this class that can be applied to other classes at Baruch.  I was amazed at how a few individual hours of each member of the class added up to an impressive collection of data on a topic that was relatively difficult to research.  This would be a great way to display research in other classes.  We were asked many times to perform research in small teams and present it to the class.  However, having a whole class Wiki allows much more in depth research that can be shared with anyone easily.

Had I known about these three things, not only would I have been able to perform better research, I would’ve understood the importance of information in our society today.   Luckily, I know that these things will still be useful in my future career and personal life as well.

Before this class I didn’t pay that much attention to technology and while I was somewhat aware of the filter bubble I wasn’t very familiar with the history of companies like Google and Facebook and how they operate. I think that learning the history of these companies and other businesses discussed in the book can help me with my other classes. Discussing the future of technology will also probably come in handy.

I found Eli Pariser’s book very interesting and I learned a lot about the issues surrounding internet privacy while doing homework for this class. I did not like to blog before this class but now I don’t mind it and I am sure that will come in handy when more and more classes will require regular blogging.

I also learned how to do research quicker and more effectively thanks to the tips you gave on using the databases and have gotten much better at doing research. I had never worked with a wiki before so that was a good lesson to have as well. I did not like mind maps at first but now I see how they could be useful in presentations and I will probably be using them in the future.

I am much more aware of where the privacy laws are headed in this country and what different websites can do with my information. It was interesting to learn about how our online histories can be misinterpreted and even wrongfully used against us. I wish that we could have gone more into internet privacy laws and finding better solutions to the filter bubble. I don’t know if that would have helped with my other classes but it would have been nice to cover more about privacy issues. That video we watched about how technology is affecting our lives with virtual office meetings and video game recruiting was really interesting and I would have liked to have learned more about how technology is shaping the world we live in and what it will be like in the future.